


My Better Half

by Sassaphrass



Series: I hold with those who Favour Fire [5]
Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Abuse of Telepathic Twin Bond, Angst, Archangel Twins, Betrayal of Trust, Brotherly Angst, Coda to Season 1 Episode 8, Gabriel is a dick, Gen, In some ways a Coda to the Entire Series, Unconditional Love, and a meanie, dysfunctional family relationships, michael POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 08:25:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5085427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was never a question that Michael would visit his imprisoned brother. Gabriel has hurt him, or tried to, in all the ways he can, but for angels, or at least, for Michael- love isn't always a choice. </p>
<p>There have been times when Michael has abandoned his soul to rage- it was easier than abandoning Gabriel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Better Half

 

“Michael.” Gabriel says, and there's a smile on his face that just might be sincere. Michael can't tell anymore. “My yin. My better half.”

 

It is an old joke whose punch line is no longer funny now that it has become true.

 

But Michael smiles anyway because for so long it wasn't true, and certainly Gabriel was the only creature in the world who thought Michael the better of the twins.

 

Gabriel was the calm one, the patient one. He loved Michael in all the moments when Michael couldn't love himself. He was the best of them, well, he might have been tied with Raphael, maybe.

 

And now he wasn't. Sometimes Michael hates himself for how he cannot hate his brother. It was Gabriel's machinations that had slaughtered the higher angels Michael had sheltered- all save Noma. It was Gabriel who had selfishly begun this war in a fit of pique. 

 

So, now it was Michael who had to be noble. Had to be brave in the ways that were the most difficult.

 

Especially for him.

He didn't have a good record of refusing those he loved.

 

Jeep had said something to him once. One day when Michael had stood among the bodies of his brethren trying not to weep for them and for what had been lost: “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to you enemies, and a great deal more to stand up to your friends.”

 

He'd liked that. Told Jeep he thought it a bit poetic. Jeep had laughed. Michael never got the joke, but then he was a bad judge of poetry- always had been. He'd thought about asking Uriel, she tended to know about that sort of thing, but by the time he saw her again it seemed trivial.

 

Gabriel might know, but though Michael saw him often, it was never the sort of talk where you idly wondered aloud about poetry. Besides, Gabriel didn't like poetry anymore. He'd given it up after the Romantics, something about Lord Byron having polluted the entire art form.

 

He's tempted to ask all the same though. If only to see his brother's amusement even if it is laced with scorn.

 

Even here, now, in a city under siege and built on corpses of Gabriel's making, Michael has missed his brother.

 

“You broke the bond first, Michael when you stopped listening.” Gabriel all but barks at him. There's a note of finality there, a tamped down simmer of rage.

 

“I felt I had no choice.” Is Michael's reply, and he is cold. There is no room for regret, no soft nostalgia or might-have-beens. Michael had done what necessary to the fullest extent which he was able.

 

Michael knows he will never be able to stop loving his brother, but he has made peace with his separation from his twin. Never again will he be able to fully trust his other half. Their relationship cannot be repaired even if it cannot be destroyed.

 

He envies humans their choices. The sheer reckless abandon they have as they barrel full tilt through their lives, love and hate and anger. A human can sunder a betrayer from their heart, or at least some of them can. They can feel indifference towards those who have wronged them. It's different for angels for whom love, but not the fleeting love of mortal- nothing so human as that, is the foundation of their being. It is what built what they are.

 

Michael can no more abandon Gabriel than he can abandon his own soul (though given his past actions, he must reflect that he has abandoned his soul and it was far easier than abandoning Gabriel has proven ).

 

He must forgive his brother everything, in this there is no choice. It is who he is. Who they are.

 

He has nightmares sometimes, about the moment Gabriel turned their bond against him. The pressure in his mind and in his soul to yield to Gabriel's will. To relent in his resistance and join his twin in the slaughter of humanity.

 

It had been betrayal and it had _hurt_. That Gabriel in his rage could pervert their bond- could hurt him through it? He wishes that he could not forgive that but he can- because it was Gabriel and he always forgives Gabriel in the end. 

 

It had been fear and reflex that had made him close their bond. Nothing more than the panicked swing of a sharp blade against the gristle of their souls- a battle-quick reflex moving without thought to attack that which was hurting him.

 

And suddenly he'd been free from the attack. He'd been alone, their bond nothing but the faintest echo of what it once had been ever since, except in the quiet space at his center where he could still, sometimes, feel his twin's heartbeat.

 

He had done all he could to block his brother from his mind and from his heart.

 

And so he looks at his brother, seemingly captured, though Michael believes that about as much as he believes that Atlantis will rise once more, feels his sorrow as a faint echo next to his heart and he wishes he could trust him.

 

But he can't. Not yet, maybe not ever. Michael has made his choices. He is resigned to his fate. To his exile among the humans. There are those among them who succor his heart, lend him their strength, their resolve, their light, and so he struggles on towards the only hope he has left.

 

And if he falters on his path. If he stops to speak with his brother, whom he loves despite his crimes, well, even angels have their weaknesses. Together the pair of them have proved _that_ if nothing else.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Because I always interpreted Gabriel's "You broke the bond when you stopped listening." and Michael's "I felt I had no choice' to mean that Gabriel had in some way been using the bond against Michael or putting pressure on Michael through the bond. In essence being his usual dick of a self. 
> 
> Plus this rounds out the series nicely, with two from each brother, an one about them both. 
> 
> Any comments? Do y'all have some feelings about Dominion ending? Because I sure do.


End file.
